1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a destination estimating apparatus, a navigation system including the destination estimating apparatus, a destination estimating method, and a destination estimating program, and more particularly to a destination estimating apparatus that takes locations that have been specified as a destination in the past as destination candidates and estimates a destination from among the destination candidates, a navigation system including the destination estimating apparatus, a destination estimating method and a destination estimating program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional navigation systems have a function that, when a destination is set, searches for a route from the current position to the destination. A navigation system is also known that includes a function that, when related information exists such as information regarding traffic congestion or traffic restrictions on a route found by a search operation, presents the information to a user or searches for a route in a manner that takes the related information into consideration.
A user can set a destination in a navigation system. However, because of the trouble involved in an operation to set a destination in a navigation system, when a destination is a location that the user is accustomed to travelling to and route guidance is unnecessary, in some cases the user does not set a destination in the navigation system and consequently route searching and route guidance are not performed by the navigation system.
In such a case, the user cannot use functions such as the aforementioned function that presents related information to the user and function that searches for a route in consideration of the related information that are executed by the navigation system, and therefore the user may travel on the route without knowing that traffic congestion has arisen, or may travel as far as a point at which traffic restrictions are in place before first learning that the traffic restrictions exist on the route and consequently may have to take a detour.
A navigation system has been proposed that includes a destination estimating apparatus that, even when a user does not set a destination, automatically estimates a destination based on situation information such as the time period, the day of the week, the existence or non-existence of a passenger, and on user information such as the age and occupation of the user (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-10572). According to the aforementioned destination estimating apparatus, locations that have been specified as destinations in the past are taken as destination candidates, and a location that has the highest likelihood based on the aforementioned situation information and user information is selected and estimated to be the destination.
According to this such of destination estimating apparatus, even in a case in which the route is a road that the user is accustomed to and the user does not set a destination in the navigation system because the user believes route guidance is not required, it is possible for the destination estimating apparatus to automatically estimate the destination, search for a route thereto, and if there is related information regarding the route found by the search, present the related information to the user or present a route that takes the related information into consideration.